Reductionism can be a spiritual experience

Hello!

Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Have you ever thought of (and I mean, really contemplated) your blood as a solution? Have you ever thought of your cells as a solvent containing dissolved electrolytes and solutes. i.e. as a lipid containers with a jelly protoplasm and a fine meshwork of actin polymers to hold them together? Have you ever thought of your limbs as mere layers of proteins and lipid, organized in various mixes and shapes to form the muscles you move with and the skin that covers them?

Have you ever, at your deepest moment of emotionality, looked back and contemplated how your pounding heart is a mere pump? Have you ever thought of your thorax and abdomen as containing a cavity? Have you TRULY ever tried to imagine that the food that passes your pharynx still has a long way to go down a muscular tube?

Have you ever thought of your hormones, transduction cascades, DNA replication, protein synthesis and cellular movement as chemical reactions? Like the ones we studied in chemistry and biochemistry, starting with inputs and ending up with products with the consumption of energy. Have you ever thought of your brain as a large data processing unit with memory-keeping capability? Ever imagined the mechanical and chemical events involved just in the simple process of hearing?

Or, shall we take this to a more fundamental level; have you ever thought of yourself and the world around you as being composed mostly of SPACE? Well, most of the atom is made of space and if you don't know already, the size of the nucleus compared to the first electron orbital is comparable to a pea in a football stadium!! So technically, we ARE mostly space.

Ever thought of the vastness of space? Of the billions of other starts in our galaxy and the billions of other galaxies in our universe? Or even, of the stupefying vastness of the earth itself compared to the room where you are at the moment?

Indeed, it is extremely humbling to realize just how ordinary we are. The more reductionist you become, and the more you start to imagine just how everyday life could be misleading, the more you should start to realize the beauty of the universe. What is the point of hatred and wars? What is the point of greed? Of backstabbing? Of cheating? Of forgery?

And as I stand, perplexed, at this wonder and beauty, I feel obliged ... to find out more!

PS. R.I.P. Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman.